Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2014 10:11 pm
Hi, My husband and I are (very very slowly) renovating an old farmhouse in France. The house is on a flat bit cut in to quite a steep slope. We find that the inside of the walls at the back of the house are quite damp. So we want to put a drain along the back of the house. We know nothing, but after extensive reading of the internet we think a fin drain sounds what we want. A french drain could work perhaps, but the problem is made worse by a soak away pipe which runs along the back of the house (we want to replace with solid pipe until past the house then have the perforated pipe, but it means there is not much room for the drain and fin drains look to be very narrow.
However we are struggling to work out EXACTLY what we need to do. On the page on the website http://www.pavingexpert.com/drain07.htm it shows you can wrap the pipe in the membrane, or that the membrane can go in to the pipe. Looking at suppliers sites we see the first option is almost exclusively used - we thought maybe because a slit all along the pipe to let the membrane in would also let soil in?
In the case where the perforated pipe is wrapped in the membrane we don't understand why the water goes in to the pipe and not in to the surrounding soil. Can anyone explain?
Should the membrane be right up against the wall?
Thanks for any help
However we are struggling to work out EXACTLY what we need to do. On the page on the website http://www.pavingexpert.com/drain07.htm it shows you can wrap the pipe in the membrane, or that the membrane can go in to the pipe. Looking at suppliers sites we see the first option is almost exclusively used - we thought maybe because a slit all along the pipe to let the membrane in would also let soil in?
In the case where the perforated pipe is wrapped in the membrane we don't understand why the water goes in to the pipe and not in to the surrounding soil. Can anyone explain?
Should the membrane be right up against the wall?
Thanks for any help